Post

Post

Post, Emily Price, 1872-1960, American authority on etiquette, b. Baltimore. Born into a wealthy family, Post began her literary career as a novelist. Her best-known book, however, is Etiquette (1922), a practical guide to proper social behavior, written in a lively style. Etiquette gained wide popularity and sold more than a million copies. Emily Post broadcast on the radio after 1931 and produced a daily column on good taste that was syndicated in more than 150 newspapers. Also an authority on interior decoration, she wrote The Personality of a House (1930).

Post, George Browne, 1837-1913, American architect, b. New York City, grad. New York Univ., 1858, in civil engineering, and studied architecture with R. M. Hunt. He was one of the leaders in a notable group that helped regenerate American architecture in the period from 1875 to 1890. A member of the National Commission of Fine Arts, he was a medalist and president (1876-99) of the American Institute of Architects. He designed, among other buildings, the Produce Exchange, the Stock Exchange, the buildings of the College of the City of New York, and the World building, all in New York City, and the Wisconsin state capitol.

Post, Wiley, 1899-1935, American aviator, b. Grand Plain, Tex. He won fame in 1931 when he and Harold Gatty flew around the northern part of the earth in 8 days 15 hr 51 min. In 1933 he made a second flight alone. Post was killed with Will Rogers in an airplane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska.

The ex-communist social democrats gained increasing popularity when the transition to capitalism began to cause economic problems such as poverty and unemployment. All of them won national elections in their respective countries at least once in the past 15 years. However, their voters, who were certainly expecting left-wing policies, were very disappointed: nearly all the ex-communist "social democrats" followed a highly capitalist, neoliberal policy while in power. As a result, many disillusioned left-wing voters have turned to the remaining Communist Parties in recent years.

In western Europe, many of the self-styled communist political parties reacted by changing their policies to a more moderate and less radical course. In countries such as Italy and Germany, post-communism is marked by the increased influence of their existing Social Democrats. The anti-Soviet communist parties in western Europe (for example the Trotskyist parties), who felt that the fall of the Soviet Union vindicated their views and predictions, didn't particularly prosper from it - in fact, some of them became less radical as well.

Economy

Several communist states had undergone economic reforms from a command economy towards a more market-oriented economy in the 1980s. The post-communist economic transition was much more abrupt and aimed at creating fully capitalist economies.

All the countries concerned have abandoned the traditional tools of communist economic control, and moved more or less successfully toward free market systems. A summary of the process, containing both economic analysis and anecdotal case studies, can be found in Charles Paul Lewis's How the East Was Won (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Although some (including Lewis) stress the beneficial effect of multinational investment, the reforms had important negative consequences that are still unfolding. Average standards of living registered a catastrophic fall in the early 1990s in many parts of the former Comecon - most notably, in the former Soviet Union - and began to rise again only toward the end of the decade. Some populations are still poorer today than they were in 1989 (e.g. Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, ). Others have bounced back considerably beyond that threshold however (e.g. Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia), and some, such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, are currently undergoing an economic boom (see Baltic Tiger).

Today, most post-communist countries in Europe are generally seen to have mixed economies, although it is often argued that some (such as Romania, Slovakia and Estonia, with their flat tax rates) are actually more capitalist than Western Europe.